Numbers 19:1-10

The Purification of the Unclean

19¹ And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ² This is the rule of the law which the Lord has made, saying, Give orders to the children of Israel to give you a red cow without any mark on her, and on which the yoke has never been put: ³ Give her to Eleazar the priest and let him take her outside the tent-circle and have her put to death before him. ⁴ Then let Eleazar the priest take some of her blood on his finger, shaking the blood seven times in the direction of the front of the Tent of meeting: ⁵ And the cow is to be burned before him, her skin and her flesh and her blood and her waste are to be burned: ⁶ Then let the priest take cedar-wood and hyssop and red thread, and put them into the fire where the cow is burning. ⁷ And the priest, after washing his clothing and bathing his body in water, may come back to the tent-circle, and will be unclean till evening. ⁸ And he who does the burning is to have his clothing washed and his body bathed in water and be unclean till evening. ⁹ Then let a man who is clean take the dust of the burned cow and put it outside the tent-circle in a clean place, where it is to be kept for the children of Israel and used in making the water which takes away what is unclean: it is a sin-offering. ¹⁰ And he who takes up the dust of the burned cow is to have his clothing washed with water and be unclean till evening: this is to be a law for ever, for the children of Israel as well as for the man from another country who is living among them.